Are associations formed across pairs? A test of learning by temporal contiguity in associative recognition

In models such as the search of associative memory (SAM: Gillund & Shiffrin, Psychological Review, 91(1), 1-67 1984) model, associations in paired-associate tasks are only formed between the pair of to-be-remembered items. The temporal context model (TCM: Howard & Kahana, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 46, 268-299 2002) deviates from SAM by positing that long-range associations are formed between the current item and all previously presented items, even in paired-associate tasks, where cross-pair associations are formed in addition to within-pair associations (Davis, Geller, Rizzuto, & Kahana, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 64-69 2008). We tested this proposal in an associative recognition task by constructing rearranged pairs where the distance in within-list serial position between the two pair members was manipulated between one and five pairs. Models such as TCM would predict that FAR should be highest for rearranged pairs that are constructed from pair members that were adjacent to each other on the study list, whereas models such as SAM predict that FAR should be equal for rearranged pairs regardless of whether they are constructed from adjacent or remote pairs. Results from our experiment and from three archival datasets found that FAR for rearranged pairs did not depend on whether the constituent items came from nearby or remote pairs, suggesting that participants were not forming associations across pairs of items in the task.